


You're Letting In the War

by Todesengel



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-23
Updated: 2013-01-23
Packaged: 2017-11-26 13:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Todesengel/pseuds/Todesengel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky's not used to being the smaller man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're Letting In the War

The problem with Steve – as Bucky is quickly beginning to realize – is that he makes a shitty soldier. Oh, sure, he's great at the tactics and the grand assaults and the blowing up of Hydra bases, but that's only 10%, at best, of what being a soldier is all about. The rest of the time is about being cold and hungry and tired and afraid and waiting. And this Steve – this new Steve with a body to fit his outsized heart – isn't good at waiting. Which is why when Steve makes his fifth round past Bucky's foxhole – and, fuck, of course Steve would wander around in the open in his fancy suit and without his helmet while the Krauts are busy trying to shell them all to hell, as if they needed all that mortar fire to make this frozen shithole even more miserable – Bucky reaches out and pulls him in. 

In his heart of hearts, Bucky's a little disappointed that Steve manages to make the sudden descent into the shallow bowels of Northern Italy look graceful and carefully planned, not flailing and awkward like a normal guy. Like he would have, once upon a time.

"Give a fella some warning, Buck," Steve says, but he's grinning, clearly thinking Bucky's trying to pull a prank on him. 

"Why? You don't need it." Bucky fishes out a pack of cigarettes – crushed and a bit mud stained, like just about everything else in this place – and lights one up. He takes a drag, then offers the cigarette to Steve. "Have a smoke, take a load off." 

"No thanks." 

Bucky shrugs and puts the pack away. He shoves his hands into his pockets, tries to ignore the prickles of pain that shoot up from the tips of his fingers and the way his nail beds are starting to look a little blue. "Ok, then don't smoke." He shoves up against Steve, as much because he's cold and his foxhole is small as to keep Steve still and, perhaps, alive. "Take a load off anyway." 

Steve cocks his head to the side, the way he does when he's considering a real problem, like he's not freezing his nuts off in a hole in Italy. "You feeling all right Bucky?" 

Bucky huffs out a laugh, watches the way his breath mingles with the smoke from his cigarette, which in turn mingles with the acrid scent of distant death and artillery fire. "Sure," he says. "Everything's just fine and dandy. 'Cept for the neighbors making too much noise."

"Yeah, I noticed that." Steve shifts beneath him, and for a moment Bucky thinks he's going to try and get up, go back to his useless pacing – or worse, pull some stupid shit like taking on an entire panzer division by himself. But it's just Steve making himself more comfortable, or as comfortable as a man can be when he's huddled in a hole. He throws one arm around Bucky's shoulders, pulls him in tight, and it takes Bucky a minute to realize why this feels so strange; he's still not used to being smaller than Steve. 

"You know, it was a lot easier to bunk with you when you were pocket-sized," Bucky says, because it's true, and because it's easier to make a joke than to admit how much Steve's transformation unnerves him, how Steve's presence makes his chest knot in strange and uncomfortable ways.

He doesn't like being the smaller man. 

"You want me to leave?"

"What, so you can freeze to death?" Bucky takes a last puff of his cigarette and flicks the butt out of the foxhole and into the snow, watches it arc like a miniature mortar. "Guess even the great Howard Stark can't cure a lack of common sense."

Steve grins and begins to hum under his breath; it takes a moment before Bucky realizes he's humming that scarecrow song from "The Wizard of Oz", because that's another thing that hasn't changed – Steve still can't carry a tune to save his life. 

"Hey," Bucky says, before Steve can go on mangling the song. "Did you meet her?"

"Who?"

"Her. The dame in that movie. When you were doing your bonds thing."

Steve shakes his head and Bucky can feel it all the way to his frozen boots. "Nah." He hums again, with no pretense at a tune now, then says, "I did meet her dog, though. He tried to bite me."

"Dog's got good taste." Bucky huddles down further into his coat, further into the warmth of Steve's body by his side, and it's just like Brooklyn had been sometimes, when they couldn't scrape up the cash to turn on the heat. He looks up at the unfamiliar sky, and tries to pretend the distant crash and thunder of the falling shells is the sound of back firing cars. It doesn't work but it does make Steve seem less foreign, he being the most familiarly strange thing in this world turned upside down. 

The knot in his chest still aches, makes it hard to breathe in the cold air. It feels like it's been sitting inside him forever, but he knows that's not true, just like he knows he'll adjust to his new old friend. He breathes in as deep as he can, takes in the scent of earth and sweat. Steve breathes beside him, steady and constant and without his familiar hitch and wheeze. Above them a flare lights up the night and Bucky traces its slow arc as it glows then dies. In the distance, a German machine gun barks out its rat-a-tat-tat into the night. Somewhere down the line one of their MGs answers back.

"Jesus," Bucky says. He pats his jacket, hears the crinkle of the cigarette package sitting there close to his heart. He glances at Steve, then back across the darkness to where the enemy sits in foxholes of their own and tries not to think about the fact that the guys over there are more like him than Steve is now – that they're just regular schmucks who live and breathe and die like ordinary fellas, not super soldiers who can bend metal with their bare hands. 

"Yeah," Steve says, and Bucky doesn't know what Steve's agreeing with. He wonders if Steve realizes how much he's changed. He's always been a scrapper, but there's something different to him now, more confidence, more certainty, though Steve was never what you'd call a shrinking violet. He wonders if Steve ever thinks about the kid he used to be.

"Fuck it," Bucky says at last, when his eyes are watering from the cold and staring at nothing at all. "I'm getting some shut eye." He pulls his rough army blanket high over his shoulders, drapes it across Steve as well when Steve shifts as though he's about to leave and resume his endless pacing; for all that Steve is a stranger now, he's still Steve and Bucky knows better than to leave him to his own devices. 

"Bucky—" Steve says, perhaps a half-hearted protest, perhaps a reminder that he doesn't need a blanket anymore 

"Shut up, Rogers, and get the cover," Bucky says. "You're letting in the war."


End file.
